


Build Better Bridges

by CannibalKats



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, NB Vanderwood, canon character death, secret end spoilers, top surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-31 02:55:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12666810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CannibalKats/pseuds/CannibalKats
Summary: Agent 07 was a special kind of punishment for Vanderwood, all things considered.





	Build Better Bridges

They stare at the foreign language dictionary in their hand and then back at the gate, the only thing about the little bungalow that stood out.  Vanderwood sighs and contemplates exactly how they ended up here.  Staring down a homemade security alarm knowing the unpredictable person who programed it is inside, in a pile of filth waiting to torment them.

They wonder if they answered wrong, what would be the punishment.  Agent 07 was so unpredictable it could be anything from a glitter bomb to an actual bomb.  Maybe one day they’d hate themself enough to find out.

Vanderwood doesn’t really have to wonder how they’d fallen so far.  Every day they look at themself in the mirror and they know.  Agent 07 was a special kind of punishment.  Not that Vanderwood disliked the kid.  They pitied him to be honest and if he took a minute to shut the fuck up maybe they could find a common ground.  Still every morning, every evening, every time they changed Vanderwood can see the faded scars on their chest.  The choice they made.

A special fuck you tribute to what this job became.

Not like they didn’t know what they were getting into.  Morality was a sliding scale when you agreed to this kind of life but the Agency had changed.  Had started changing before Agent 07 had even met the people who’d sold him into service like a bad TV drama.  Not that Vanderwood didn’t have at least a little respect for 05, but even they could see the boy was too green to really grasp the situation.

The  _ bunker _ , the kid calls it.  Vanderwood shoves the uncharacteristically heavy door open.  Surprised at the weight every time for some unknown reason, the way a person pushes the same pull door because the handle is wrong.  The place is a mess, the distinct smell of dirty dishes assaulting their sense before their eyes can adjust to the dim lit house.

They sigh.  The kid is passed out on the filthy couch again.  Chip bags and soda cans cover his abandoned desk.  Take out containers cover all the counters; a pizza box is open on the coffee table. They snag the blanket that’s fallen onto the floor and pull it up over Agent 07’s shoulders, resist the urge to pat him on the shoulder or pry his arms away from where they wrap protectively around his head.  Vanderwood might be his handler, he might feel bad for this kid but if experience has taught him anything it’s that one day this kid is going to fuck up.  Probably soon.

That’s why Vanderwood got him.

Vanderwood tidy’s up.  They don’t have to wonder how their life has come to this because they know exactly why they’re here.

Ten years ago, they wouldn’t have imagined they’d be cleaning up behind a future dead kid.  Ten years ago they wouldn’t have imagined a lot of things they’d done.

Vanderwood just wants to survive now.

They’d been pragmatic, and maybe a little rebellious.

Ok it was mostly rebellious.

“You’re so pretty,” people would say.

“Why do you dress like that?”

“Sweetheart you should smile.”

They didn’t want to smile.  Didn’t want to be in the spotlight if they weren’t on a stage.  Well on their way to being a Prima Ballerina, actively sought after by much larger companies than the one their mother ran.  Mama’s company was nothing to sneeze at either.  They’d danced for the Queen.  A stepping stone company they might be, but a prestigious one.

Vanderwood was good.  They can barely remember the name they had then. Can hear their mother’s voice, see her eyes and her fingers with their gnarled knuckles but their name takes effort.  They don’t exactly care about that anyway. They remember the way it felt to dance, the way the toe shoes fit, the way the knuckles of their toes swelled.

Bandaids and bruises and girls with eating disorders. Those people had thought them aloof, and haughty, they thought they took to dance effortlessly, that it was genetic.  But they’d practiced.  Started training their body from the moment they could move.  Mimicking Mama til she noticed and started teaching them for real.  Harsh Mama who still smiled sweet when they earned their spot with the Royal Ballet.

The Agency had been in it’s infancy then.  Recruiting worldwide.

“You don’t mind if you can never make it big at this?” He’d asked, cigarette smoke billowing out from beneath his stupid hat like they were in a film noir. 

Vanderwood in a big formless sweater, smoking a clove cigarette and looking the part of the waife.  They shook their head, hadn’t minded at all if they were honest.  

The stage was nice but they’d understudied the swan and found themself in tabloid magazines.  Relegating themselves to the nameless roles, a pretty face in a handbill who’s name was overlooked was exactly what they wanted now.

Infiltration, attending events with politicians.  They were trained in languages; spoken, signed, and body language.  Trained to eavesdrop, trained to be anything to everyone.  Trained to stand out and blend in.  It had been exhilarating.  Planting bugs, recording conversations, attending parties.  Vanderwood had been to palaces and villas, estates, yachts, everywhere and anywhere. 

Then they’d injured themself and Mama had wanted them to recover at home.  Maybe they’d never dance with the Royal Ballet again but they could still teach.  They pretended that they couldn’t, that if they couldn’t follow their dream they wouldn’t settle.  They could hear their mother’s heartbreak.  The heart her dancers swore she didn’t have.

The Agency had faked the death of the woman they had been when they had been a dancer.  A few years ago they’d heard their mother had died.  They took their vacation, went home and drank a bottle of scotch while they cried on her headstone, nestled between the grave of father they’d never known and the one with a name nearly forgotten.

The agency had trained them for field work when they recovered.  A pretentious degree in literature that would secure their place among the wealthy, and when they weren’t in classes they were training with weapons.  They’d had a proficiency in martial arts and ranged weapons.  It was like dancing but something more.  It filled an emptiness they hadn’t had time to even recognize.

Morality is a sliding scale in this line of work and they’d always enjoyed their right to choose without repercussion.  Liked to think they made a difference when they turned down a job. That maybe someone somewhere was paying attention.  

Vanderwood was the colour grey.  They thought they their judgement might make a difference.  Turns out there was always someone who valued money over lives willing to take on their cast offs.  They suppose it was the job at the school when they realized things were shifting.  

They’d turned down too many jobs.  More requests to take out rivals, petty things usually not worth a life.  They’d been assigned to other agents before, this time the kid was not unlike 07.  A hacker.  A mouse in a cage running a wheel that spit out information.

Vanderwood could hack, most field agents had some entry level skill.  These kids they would work with were something else entirely.  They read code like Vanderwood read a menu.  This job came with an underlying threat and a ticket to Korea.  It rubbed them wrong.  Something about a rich man’s daughter, concern about the step family.

It seemed sympathetic.

It wasn’t.  There was nothing.  A dead lead.  They bound their chest and posed as a male English language teacher, but there was nothing there.  Just a young person Vanderwood could see something of themselves in.  A dancer in her mother’s studio, the only girl in class with trousers on.  Step brother and best friend always meeting her at the door to the classroom.

There was nothing there.  So the hacker made something up.  Because that’s what the client wanted.

Vanderwood had made a fuss. 

“This is not what I fucking signed up for!”

So they babysat the hacker kid.  Found themself in Thailand at first.  Until the kid burnt out.  That had been the real moment of truth.  This girl who was too smart for her own good.  Too fucked up to see through the recruiter.  Too eager for schooling and money with a work ethic this new version of the Agency could exploit.  She’d worked too hard and burnt out. Left a trail, missed a deadline and suddenly Vanderwood’s job description included  _ cleaner _ .

It’s fine, they’d been told.  Just take a vacation and get over it.

Then it happened again.  Czech Republic this time.  Fresh out of the program.  Just as eager, just as exploitable.  He thinks he’s doing good.  Changing the world.  Vanderwood thought the last part was probably right but the good?  In this economy?

Took longer this time, a few years before the boy burnt out.  Love fucks with a lonely kid.  Vanderwood tries to help, tries to remind them what’s at stake.  Doesn’t want to break the kid, gentle as they were.  _ Fuck _ they’d thought more than once,  _ how’d he even make through basic with his heart intact _ .  Their pleas are too subtle, or maybe just ignored.

Another one bites the dust.

They’re glad they’re a marksmen.  Glad they don’t have to look that kid in the eye when they pull that trigger.

Fuck the agency, there’s nothing there connecting them to these kids.  The boy had delivered every bit of anything willingly, thinking they were just moving base.  Vanderwood lets local authorities deal with it.  They hear the agency used the mess to frame a politician.

“Take a vacation,” they hate the thought.  They hate the bonus but they know exactly what to do with it.

“The fuck did you do to yourself.”

The new boss is a clown.  Crude, fat, cheats on his wife.  He smells like cat piss and cheap cigars and Vanderwood has never hated a person more.  Vanderwood’s tits were not the issue.  Not to the job at least.  No one had put them in a gown or sent them to a ball in years.  New boss just liked to be in control.

Vanderwood had never really had an issue with their body.  Sure sometimes they weren’t a fan of their chest, but that’s what a closet full of binders was for, and sometimes cleavage came in handy, however little they’d been gifted.  Still top surgery had been on their want list and it was a power move.  A middle finger.  A suicide note.

America isn’t exactly what they remember.  05 handing over the boy, whispering in his ear.  Wide golden eyes blink up at them.  Vanderwood had worked with 05 before, a freelancer who wore his callsign on his sleeve.  They wonder when the photographer will finally make the wrong move and end up like those kids.  The way the boy shakes when his blue hair is out of sight, Vanderwood almost thinks he deserves it.

“You speak english kid?”

He nods, “I taught myself.”

“You ever been here before?”

The kid sniffles shakes his head.

God he’s young.  Vanderwood knows what his future holds and they knows this is a special sort of hell devised just for them.  Specifically created to foster dependence and Vanderwood is not going to rise to it.  A few weeks in it’s pretty easy.  The kid is smart, but he’s got not social skills.  Goes to all his classes, doesn’t make any friends, doesn’t get into any trouble, doesn’t talk to Vanderwood unless it's about a job.

Of course he has work to do.  Vanderwood has a stack of low priority datamines and other bullshit they can’t be bothered to look too deeply at before they hand it off to the kid.  He finishes each one with impressive speed.  Vanderwood thinks the last two kids combined had never even in their prime been worth one of him.

That makes it worse some how.  His burn out will be swift.

“That girl likes you, are you fucking stupid?” Vanderwood smirks.  They know the kids been sneaking off with the girl.  Neither of them know they’d caught them in the bathroom outside the student building.  Vanderwood wants to let him have this.  

The kid shrugs, “I thought we couldn’t get attached.”

“Can’t marry her, doesn’t mean you can’t fuck her for a while.”

He blushes.  A few weeks laters Luciel Choi stops getting home late on Wednesdays.

Just before he graduates something changes.  Vanderwood had spent the last few years watching and training this kid.  He’d never been more than professional.  There was a kinship there they didn’t want to admit to.  Vanderwood was the colour grey and so was Luciel Choi.

Then he gets a package.  Vanderwood knows the only person that can access this kid’s location is 05 so they let it pass.  That’s when he starts wearing those glasses.  That’s when he stops tidying up behind himself, when he’d developed a sense of humor. Vanderwood can’t decide if this kid has something to live for, or nothing.  

Either way he’s cracked.

Vanderwood doesn’t say anything to the agency.  They’ll figure it out when he goes through his basic field training.  This is the fastest Vanderwood has ever seen a new agent lose it.  At least they didn’t get the chance to get attached,

Agent 07 finishes top of his class.

Blows away records.  A fucking crack shot.  Gets himself sent on field missions. 

It doesn’t take long for Vanderwood to realize it’s on purpose.  The bonus that comes with a field mission is more than nice and the kid never keeps it.  Wastes what he keeps on cars.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars parked in his garage and he barely keeps up with his bills.  Vanderwood is quick, they know what the bonus is and what the kid should have in the bank but there’s nothing.

They let him have the RFA, if only because 05 is involved and it feels like it keeps the kid motivated.  Vanderwood can see the wall his jokes put up.  That quiet diligent kid is still in there.  His work always done on time.  Even if he teases, even if he sets traps and calls them Madam.  Vanderwood doesn’t worry because whatever this kid found to live for seems to actually keep him alive.

Until very suddenly it doesn’t.

“What do you mean you need an extension?”

“It the RFA-”

“You know the Boss will have your fucking head if he finds out about the fucking RFA.” Vanderwood brandishes their taser at the kid.  Punctuates the seriousness of the situation.

He throws up his hands.  His red hair is greasy and plastered to his face and he’s wearing the same tank top he was wearing the last time Vanderwood had stopped by for a status update.  In the end Vanderwood doesn’t rat him out and the Boss talks the client into an extension.  The kid’s so good they don’t question it and Vanderwood is floored.  They’d heard through the grapevine that this particular client was not exactly forgiving.

This kid had a horseshoe up his ass.

He can tell that his luck as run out when the kid wakes up.  The way he shrinks when he sees Vanderwood sitting across from him. 

“You have those files for me now?”

“Heh,” he shrugs, “dog ate ‘em?”

“Come on 07, you know you’re lucky the client didn’t end you last week.”

“I still have a few hours it’s just, the RFA-”

“Don’t RFA me, you finish this job and you hope no one finds out you’re involved with them or they’re gone. You’re fucking gone, we’re all fucking gone, 07.”

“Yeah, fine Mrs. Vanderwood, don’t get your panties in a twist.”

Vanderwood watches the kid shuffle to his workspace and set to work.  He had 8 hours left til the deadline and under normal circumstances 07 could be done in 3. 

“Where are you going?”

“Gotta get something out of the garage.”

“Are you done?”

“Almost.”

Vanderwood shrugs,  let’s him go.  Relieved there’s no robots this time.  Relieved the job is just about done.  They both had time off coming to them, and as harsh as the client was they were also generous.

He doesn’t hear the garage door, doesn’t hear the car engine rev, doesn’t-

“Bark! Bark!”

Fucking fire breathing robot dog.  Fucking Luciel Choi.

Vanderwood makes a frantic call to the Agency, this isn’t just 07 on the line but all they can get is a maybe.   _ If _ they can finish the job and the client is satisfied  _ maybe _ they only take 07.  Vanderwood is pissed off enough in the moment that he’d almost be ok with having to kill the kid.

It all goes to hell after that.

Fucking Agent 07.  Fucking Agent 05.  Fuck.

Vanderwood doesn’t question the hair, the clothes, doesn’t even question the contacts.  Luciel is on the run, who are they to judge the way he changes his appearance.  The weird fucking castle is  _ something _ but now he’s threatening the agency?  Now Vanderwood is implicated by virtue of being his handler and he can’t just drop the kid and wait for his replacement.  Can’t just start the cycle again.

Now he has to bring him in and prove a point.

Except he  _ should _ have questioned all those things.

Luciel had blended in by standing out for 2 years why would he try to hide from the agency that way.  They’re too stubborn to accept it at first.  07 is just commited to the bit.  What did he have to lose.  They know the kid has a fucked up sense of humor and this is just an opportunity to torment them just a little more.  Milk it until he’s ultimately killed or reprogrammed.

Vanderwood has to face that fact.  This is kid is good, reprogramming is only a rumor but if anyone was a candidate it was 07.

Then they gets that call and the Boss says to humor the kid.

They know they shouldn’t get into the car but they just don’t have a fuck left to give.  This is a mess, it’s a fucking disaster and they’re all going to die.  Agent 07, his brother, the girl, probably the RFA too if 07 isn’t careful.  Definitely if the Agency finds out 05 is involved.

The kid is a fucking Wizard.  Everything just goes more wrong and if Vanderwood had a brain in their head they’d take off, fake their death.  Let the fucking cult deal with 07 and just fuck the fuck off.  They have the tools.  The kid had literally handed them all the papers they need to get out.  Untraceable.  Vanderwood, all of their aliases?  Gone.  The kid had risked his life just to make sure that Vanderwood could get out too.

Then the shit hits the fan.

Vanderwood had thought it couldn’t get worse.  Let the head-case outside, give him a minute to breathe, Vanderwood was trained to earn trust.  Where could the little junkie go after all.  

They should know better.  All Choi’s are the same and the squirrely one is no different.  Palmed a phone, didn’t just call his fucking cult but all that  _ just in case  _ Luciel had kept, all those threats, the fucking maniac boy lets it go.  Vanderwood doesn’t even fight when they take them away.  Luciel with his wounds still fights every step but what was the point.

His brother had killed them.

Might as well join the cult.

Of course 05 is there, of course everyone knows the crazy bitch on the throne and 07 for all his rage tries to reason with her.  Like her eyes aren’t glazed over with whatever drug she’s been feeding her followers.  This was not Vanderwood’s first cult, they can see that this one is a gentle breeze from drinking the koolaid.

Vanderwood wants to distance themself from the kid but there’s that girl and that look in his eyes and Vanderwood knows someone who values the lives around them more than themself.  They wonder if the kid’s eyes are a mirror of their own.  Vanderwood is the colour grey and so is Luciel and Vanderwood can’t let another kid die.

Especially one that seems so ready to accept it.   Not with that girl looking at him like she is.  

“You’re bleeding again,” Vanderwood takes 07’s wounded arm in one hand and feels around their cape with the other.  There’s a button in the lining and they’re going to trust that if 07 had the forethought for everything else he’s not going to get them killed by activating it.

Even if he does, even if the tracker still pings the Agency, at least that death would be better than the torture waiting for them here.

People die. 

Vanderwood is so focused on 07 and the girl and the sudden fucking longing to not have to watch another kid die, they miss it.  Did 07’s brother  _ always _ have a gun?  Was Vanderwood just too distracted to notice?  Did they get it from someone.  How lax had they been, how distracted.  How many people in this room were armed?  That was the first thing they usually noticed.

What was wrong with them?

Jumin Han’s team gets there one beat behind the gun shot.  The doors bursting open as the screams of the woman called Rika reach their peak.  The girl quiet with 05’s head cradled in her lap, 07 wrapped protectively around his brother.  The gun forgotten.  Vanderwood takes it, turns the safety on and tucks it in their empty holster.  They kneel next to the girl.

It’s pointless, the boy’s shot was lucky, 05 is going to die, and soon but Vanderwood can’t bring themself to tell the girl that so they kneel next to her, cover her hand with their own and help them put pressure on the wound.  They make eye contact and nod and whisper soft soothing things.  05’s eyes are open, his heart still pumps but it’s starting to slow.

She doesn’t need to know.

Vanderwood slips away when the ambulances get there.  They aren’t needed, barely noticed, it’s easy to get lost in the crowd of cultists.  Easy to get back to the abandoned cabin where the papers Luciel had given them are left forgotten on an end table.

Vanderwood doesn’t exist anymore, and neither does the Agency.

“Things are wild in Korea, huh?”

Asra Stark glances between the flowers in their hand and the TV on their wall.  The fat greasy man being escorted by police causes an almost visceral reaction, but they don’t know him.  Asra Stark has no connection to Korea, to the secret agency or it’s ties to a strange cult.  So they shrug.

That fat piss scented fuck can rot but these African Daisy’s would not.

Asra Stark does not miss being Vanderwood, doesn’t miss the name they barely remember.  They run a flower shop, teach Ballet at a local dance school in the evenings and they rarely think about dead kids, or red hair.  Rarely thinking about anything thing they might have done.  Nothing existed before this,  _ they _ hadn’t existed before this.

Asra Stark teaches little children how to love dance, and how to love themselves.  They do well with their flowers, they have to hire a couple teenagers to help out in the afternoons. Now when people rely on them there is no axe hanging over anyone’s head.  No clock ticking down to someone’s inevitable doom.

People know their name, Asra Stark smiles for cameras, waves to people on the street.  Asra Stark doesn’t think about red hair and the smell of dirty dishes.  Doesn’t think about stacks of soda cans and piles of takeout containers.  Asra Stark dates men, woman, and people who are neither.  Asra Stark invites their boyfriend to move in with them.

Five years pass.  They forget about Korea.

Forget about Luciel Choi, and the girl that loved him.  At the very least they just don’t think about them anymore.

“Hey,” a familiar voice calls.

Asra Stark twists their fingers in their boyfriend’s hair and peppers his face with kisses before they push him playfully out the back door of the flower shop.  Familiar voices this time of morning meant deliveries.

“Ha,” curly red hair and sparkling golden eyes glinting through glasses.

Asra Stark swallows but they don’t respond.  The man in front of them shifts a preschooler on his hip and glances around the flower shop.

“You know you look just like a maid I used to have.”

 


End file.
